About Miyabi
The Regelski Collection began inadvertently in 1983 when Thomas was a visiting professor at Aichi University in Japan.
He lived in neighboring Nagoya; then, as now, a leading source of Japanese antiques—the Nagoya Antique Auction is world famous. The first purchases at various temples were intended as souvenirs, though he was already attracted to lacquerware (urushi). When returning to the US, an interest in Zen Buddhism led him to study Zen’s influence on Japanese arts. Tom arrived to Finland in 2000 as a Fulbright professor to teach at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Then, he met wife-to-be Kaisa Kononen, a marine biologist and member of the chorus he conducted during his stay. Tom returned to Helsinki in 2001 and began the serious pursuit of a quality collection together with Kaisa carefully photographing and cataloging each purchase.
The collection was built mainly on an inheritance from Tom’s father, Adam Regelski, to whom it is dedicated. First, the original US collection had to be shipped to Finland. Original plans were to publish a book, but as the collection grew to its present size of over 3000 pieces, a website was more realistic for accommodate all the color pictures and text.
As it is, we live amongst the collection in our home and even use some of it. Visitors to the ‘gallery’ can get close to objects, lift them, and study them from various angles. Visits are by arrangement, miyabiantiques@gmail.com.
Around the same time as the website decision, we founded MIYABI Japanese Antiques—The Regelski Collection to showcase the collection and eventually to sell some to make room for new additions to the collection.
We hope that by presenting this collection and introducing the magnificent, rich, multifaceted history of Japanese art, viewers will take advantage of nearby galleries of these treasures. In Finland, our little gallery is a good beginning.
